The Gong, the Ledger, and the Wrong Jersey: Inside Pakistan's IMF-Linked Reform Story

On Thursday morning, a gong sounded on the trading floor of the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Karachi. It was a borrowed moment — a ritual imported from London and New York, meant to announce that the day, and the market, had begun. But the men standing behind that sound — Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, and business leader Arif Habib — carried something in their expressions that no camera flash could hide. What I read there was not the start of a trading session but the lateness of a settlement. The applause, the flashbulbs, the microphone's cold rasp: the picture was perfect. Yet to me the real news lay not in the gong but in the piles of debt, promises and tax ledgers stacked around it — and the gong was merely drowning them out.

I have spent a lifetime learning to look outside the frame. The walk outside the stadium, the silence of an empty gallery, the dead air of a radio broadcast — these gaps tell the true story. The same applies here. While everyone watches the gong, I watch the floor beneath it, where a prime minister is stating his economic philosophy and, beside him, a finance minister is describing reforms dictated by an international lender. Between the two speeches lies a distance, and that distance is the heart of this piece.

To grasp the context, one must return to Pakistan's old economic cycle, in which every government arrives with promises and leaves by accepting IMF conditions. For decades Pakistan has been caught in a breathless loop: reserves fall, imports rise, loan instalments come due, and the door of the lender is knocked on again. In this cycle, the language of politics and the language of accounting never quite meet. The prime minister speaks of growth, exports and self-reliance. The finance minister speaks of debt structure, tax coverage and fiscal discipline. When both languages are spoken on the floor of the stock exchange, it is genuinely an extraordinary scene — because the capital market is that rare place where a nation's harshest arithmetic and its largest dreams stand beneath the same gong.

I have watched economic ceremonies staged like theatre for years. Who sits where, who speaks first, who rings the gong — all pre-arranged. But inside this staged set there is always a small crack where the real crisis shows. This Thursday's ceremony had that crack: when the prime minister's call for exports and the finance minister's reform list are placed side by side, one sees that exporters are under one kind of pressure and the government under another. On one side, foreign currency must be earned by boosting exports; on the other, an international lender must be shown that reform is underway. Between these two pressures stands Pakistan's ordinary businessman and taxpayer.

Shehbaz Sharif stood on that floor and spoke of export-led growth. The phrase sounds simple, but it carries heavy politics. Export-led growth means the country can no longer run only on domestic consumption; it must sell abroad and earn dollars. This is not new to Pakistan, yet it returns each time as a fresh promise — because raising exports is easy on paper and hard in reality. It requires stable electricity, roads, ports, bank credit, and a businessman's belief that his profit will not become the state's burden. That last condition is the rarest thing in Pakistan.

When I recall export speeches from years past, a pattern emerges. Each time, the prime minister says raise exports; each time, exporters say cut costs; each time, the country returns to debt. The cause is not one person's failure but the structure. If a state keeps its revenue base weak while dreaming only of exports, that dream cannot survive without borrowing. Hence the prime minister's speech sounds of enthusiasm, and the finance minister's sounds of conditions. When these two tunes play together, the resulting music is the true economic song of Pakistan.

Then came the finance minister's section, the ceremony's clearest political statement. Muhammad Aurangzeb presented a reform agenda tied to the International Monetary Fund's Extended Fund Facility. The phrase sounds simple but is not. An IMF programme is not merely a loan; it is an image — the government pledges to follow certain rules and, in return, receives a ring of foreign-currency protection. These conditions often touch sensitive areas: subsidies, tariffs, taxes, public spending. The finance minister's task is hard: to satisfy the lender, reassure investors, and explain to ordinary people, all at once.

The most strategic proposal in this agenda is a change in the direction of government borrowing. Under the plan, government borrowing will move from the banking sector toward non-bank and retail channels. A simple image helps here. Imagine a family that borrows from a single shop. One day the shopkeeper says: no more credit. The family must then raise money from ordinary people in the market, at higher interest. The same logic governs public finance. When banks' assets are locked in government debt, less money remains for private business investment. Moving government borrowing outside banks therefore means keeping the bank window open for the private sector. But there is a risk no one voices: retail savers are not as patient as banks. When returns fall, they leave quickly, and that instability can raise the cost of government borrowing.

Here came the announcement of a Capital Market Development Council, including the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Placing these two institutions at one table is itself a message. Monetary policy and market regulation usually sit in separate rooms — one manages interest and money, the other the transparency of the share market. Putting them together means the government wants to draw savings out of bank deposits and into the capital market. This is partly a good sign: without a deep capital market, large companies cannot escape dependence on borrowing. It is also a political promise to investors that the market matters. The difference is that forming a council is easy; making it effective is hard.

My memory reminds me of something here. In developing countries, capital markets often bloom under state initiative and then wilt for lack of private confidence. A share market is a mirror that reveals a nation's true level of trust. If investors believe the rules are equal for all, the market grows; if they believe big players get separate rules, it dries up. The success of a Capital Market Development Council will therefore depend on transparency, not on the number of announcements.

Now to the two numbers most quoted from this ceremony. The first is the growth forecast: for the next fiscal year (FY27), GDP growth is targeted at 4 percent, against 3.7 percent in the current year (FY26). The number sounds small, but its story is large. Moving from 3.7 to 4 percent is roughly a 0.3 percentage-point improvement — a gain that a dry season or a weak collection month could erase. From years of watching policy forecasts, I have learned that the weakest forecast is the one that speaks only of the target, never of the road.

The second number is more striking. The number of tax filers has risen to 5.7 million, an increase of about 45 percent over the previous figure. This is genuinely significant, because Pakistan's greatest economic weakness is its narrow revenue base. When the number of people paying tax rises so fast, it can mean two things: either tax coverage has truly widened and more people have entered the net, or only registrations have increased while collections have not. To know which, one must watch whether the tax-to-GDP ratio is rising. More filers alone means growth on paper; more revenue means the state is truly strengthening. The number therefore invites questions, not celebration — because a taxpayer is made by trust, and trust is made by service.

Arif Habib, one of the best-known faces of Pakistani business and its capital market, was present. His presence is itself a message: private capital is willing to join hands with public reform. But I have seen such handshakes many times. The private sector likes a government's announcements as long as they do not become money; policymakers like the private sector because it promises investment. This mutual affection is lovely but fragile. It needs a permanent policy — one that does not change when governments do.

Another part of the ceremony carried a clear criticism — of industries that receive state incentives or privileges yet fail to deliver the expected exports or jobs. The criticism is as fair as it is complex. Incentives are given with an expectation; when that expectation goes unmet, the fault belongs not only to the industry but to the policy. Over years I have seen that when subsidies and incentives are granted on political decisions, they do not survive economic logic. The favoured industry grows dependent; the unfavoured falls behind. This unequal competition ultimately harms the state. The question of incentives is therefore a question of accounting, not emotion.

Now I come to the place where I want to place the real key to this piece. The material that reached me arrived with a label — 'football'. Yet inside there was no team, no player, no match, no goal. There was the prime minister's speech, the finance minister's reform list, the stock exchange gong, the tax-filer count and the growth forecast. In other words, a national economic report had been forced into a sports jersey. This error is not small; it reveals how deep the classification problem in our information system runs. And the curious part is that when the same material reached me again, it wore yet another label — 'blockchain'. Yet there is no blockchain here, no digital ledger, no token; only fiscal policy and debt arithmetic.

To me this labelling confusion is the biggest news of all — because if a nation's financial obligations can be so easily filed in the wrong room, then the very framework for seeing, understanding and managing those obligations is flawed. Over this decade I have seen repeatedly that news is born on the field and sometimes born on the wrong page. And news born on the wrong page never finds its right reader. Pakistan's reform story is now trapped searching for the right page. This is my counter-intuitive discovery: the problem is not only economic; it is a problem of how we see.

This reminds me of a time I sat for long hours in an empty stadium where no match was played. That day I understood that absence, too, is an archive — missing documents, empty seats, an ungonged gong are all part of history. The same applies here. What no one saw is what matters most. The gong rang, applause fell, the photo was printed; but what was not printed was the date of the next loan instalment, the real rate of tax collection, the risk of savings pulled out of banks. These unprinted things will decide the coming years — how much pressure Pakistan's ordinary people will bear.

I am sceptical of financial forecasts, especially in developing countries. Forecasts are built from last year's data, while reality changes this very month. Four percent growth is possible if investment comes; investment comes if confidence exists. Confidence is built when a small businessman believes that paying tax brings service and paying interest brings credit. Without that belief, 4 percent is only a number on a table, not the reality on the ground. I have seen announcements rise and expectations rise, while real change comes slowly, silently, sometimes unnoticed. I am therefore not dazzled by this ceremony's announcements; I am waiting for the day they become visible in the taxpayer's ledger.

A question now arises: is this reform merely paper exercise? My answer: no, but caution is due. Structural reform is a slow process whose fruit appears over a decade, not a week. If Pakistan can truly move government borrowing outside banks, make its capital market transparent, and genuinely widen tax coverage, its economic foundation could strengthen over the next decade. But for all three 'ifs' to come true at once requires political patience and institutional independence. If either weakens, the rest wobbles. In my long career I have learned that institutions survive by rules, not by persons. Pakistan's future therefore rests on its institutions, not on the speeches of a stage.

At the end of this piece I want to state one clear thing, which is my duty as a foreign observer. Pakistan's reform story closely resembles my own country's story. Bangladesh, too, has circled for years through the same loop of debt, revenue and exports. Our exports also depend on a handful of garment factories; our tax base is also narrow; our capital market sometimes raises hope and sometimes disappoints. The gong of Karachi should therefore ring in Dhaka's ears as well. When a neighbour's economy stumbles, a shadow falls on this side of the border too — trade, workers, prices are all affected. We often forget this connection, and the forgetting is our loss.

I know this piece is not my usual field writing. My pen normally moves on the pitch, searching for the silence of an empty gallery and the jolt of a late goal. But today, at a desk, I am watching a different field — the floor of a stock exchange, where numbers are players and policy is the referee. Here too there is lateness, error and deception. Here too the result is decided in the final moment, sometimes on paper, sometimes in people's pockets. I do not see these two fields as separate, because in both the central question is the same: who follows the rules, and who gets the exception.

As a closing thought, I leave one expectation. If, in the coming years, Pakistan genuinely widens its tax coverage, deepens its capital market and lowers the cost of borrowing, then this Thursday's gong will be written into history as a true beginning. If not, it will remain a beautiful photograph — a gong, applause and a microphone's cold rasp. My work now is only this: to wait, and to watch whether the number in the taxpayer's ledger is truly rising. Because history is never written in the sound of a gong; history is written on the pages of a ledger. And that ledger is still open.